Abstract

Over recent years the size and capacity of the Internet has continued its exponential growth driven by new applications and improving network technology. These changes are particularly significant in the New Zealand context where the high costs of trans-Pacific traffic has mandated that traffic be charged for by volume. This has also lead to a significant focus within the New Zealand Internet community on issues of caching and of careful planning for capacity.

Approximately three years ago the WAND research group began with a program to measure ATM traffic. We were sharply constrained by cost and decided to start by reprogramming some ATM NIC cards. This paper is largely based on our experience as we have broadened this work to include IP-based non-ATM networks and the construction of our own hardware. We have learned a number of lessons in this work, rediscovering along the way some of the hard discipline that all observation scientists must submit to.